Automobiles contain many instruments and gauges that provide useful information to the driver. Traditionally, the most critical information displays are positioned in front of the driver so that with just a glance, the driver can view them. These displays included a speedometer, gas gauge, temperature gauge and/or any warning lights. Other “secondary” displays, such as radios and clocks, were positioned off to the side of the drivers view toward the center of the car. This position allows both the driver and passengers in the car to view the displays. The radio usually provided just a basic display to indicate which station was on, and push buttons or knobs that the driver or passengers could use to change the station.
As the electronics in automobiles become more sophisticated, these secondary devices become more complex and have many features and functions that the driver can interact with and display much information. While a quick interaction with the device may be safe, continuous use or overuse of these devices may not be, drawing the attention of the driver away from the road. One alternative is to completely lock out features or functions on devices that are excessively demanding, or could be excessively demanding if overused. While this may be a safe alternative, it penalizes the ordinary driver who does not overuse the device. The other alternative is for not locking out any features or functions on devices, which may increase risk but does not penalize the driver. The concern with this is that the drivers are overloaded with information, sometimes called “driver workload”.
There are prior art patents and publications that are designed to interpret information about the vehicle or vehicle environment to manage driver workload. One publication describes a mathematical model for predicting driver workload titled “The Development of a Design Evaluation Tool and Model of Attention Demand.” (the DEMAND Model, incorporated in its entirety by this reference). The user inputs information about the system and tasks into the DEMAND Model computer program, and based on prior experiments done with drivers, estimates such characteristics as the number of glances that would occur during a given task in the vehicle. The DEMAND program was designed to be run in an off-line manner and estimate driver workload for different tasks done in an automobile. See also “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DRIVER PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT” (WO 20/33529A2), “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR VEHICLE OPERATOR PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT AND IMPROVEMENT”, (WO 20/34571A2,A3), and “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVING VEHICLE OPERATOR PERFORMANCE” (WO 20/30700A2,A3), all incorporated by reference.
The prior art patents and publications disclose extensive communications need to occur over a system bus, for example, to allow a system to deduce the workload state in the vehicle. The prior art does not take into account the details of the driver's direct control input into the navigation or telematics device in calculating workload.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and system for real-time assessment of driver workload by a navigation or telematics device. It is further desirable to lockout some features and functions of the navigation or telematics device if the driver workload becomes excessive. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.